Here’s Why Elon Musk Compared Tesla To A Hamburger Joint

The affordable Tesla, the much-awaited electric car, the mass-market EV Tesla Model 3 is finally here and it may change the automotive industry entirely. People are no doubt excited about the car, however, there are also a few who are disappointed as well.

63,000 preorders of Tesla Model 3 canceled

Earlier this week, Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer of the U.S.-based electric car making company said on the quarterly earnings call of the company that around 63,000 people have canceled the preorders of Tesla Model 3 over the course of the past year. The CEO revealed that the number of orders dropped from about 518,000 to 455,000.

According to the reports of Recode, the CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX said on the earnings call of the company “Those cancellations occurred over the course of more than a year.” He added, “I think [these numbers] are inconsequential. With a small amount of effort we can easily drive the Model 3 reservation number to something much higher but there’s no point. It’s like if you’re a restaurant and you’re serving hamburgers and there’s like an hour and a half wait for hamburgers, do you really want to encourage more people to order more hamburgers?”

It looks like Musk is not very worried about the canceling orders of the affordable vehicle. The mass-market EV is continuing to average 1,800 orders per day so the electric carmaker should recover those canceled orders in just over a month.

Why are people canceling the preorders of the affordable Tesla?

There are several reasons why the people are canceling the preorders but Stan Schroeder – from Mashable – shared some interesting details regarding the fine print in the marketing of Tesla recently. The details were about the new car and Schroeder called the release of Model 3 “a masterful class of marketing and deception.”

The mass-market and much awaited EV has been advertised widely with a sticker price of $35,000 but it is a model that nearly no one would want, according to Schroeder. He writes in his report, “The $35,000 version of the car is pretty bare and does not have Autopilot, which is an incredibly important feature for a car that’s been described by the company as self-driving-ready. This means that customers will have to dish out at least $5,000 more to get what they were promised, an additional $3,000 more to get full self-driving capabilities once they’re available, and $9,000 on top of that to get a better range and a nicer interior. Plus, there’s a $1,500 cost to install the home charger.

And yes, the car is technically shipping in August, but not the $35,000 version. To get that one, even a Tesla buyer that happened to reserve her Model 3 really early will have to wait until November or December.”

The Mashable reporter further writes, “Put all those together and you’ll realize that for the vast majority of buyers, the Model 3 will cost more than they thought it would and come later than promised (the car was originally slated for production start in July 2017, though Musk did admit, at the time of announcement, that this was unrealistic).”

Nishtha Singh is a iStartup staff reporter who covers tech news, including review of devices, emerging startups, acquisitions, gadgets, Cars, Cloud, EVs, AR, VR, AI and more. Further, she is a reader, a tech-enthusiast, and a writer. Editor at Teenage Publishing and proof-reader at Evoque Publishing.